


Grumpy Old Cannibals

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dark Will, Future Fic, M/M, Mute Will, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Season/Series 03, Reunions, Separations, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-02 16:29:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8674567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: “We parted ways in Miami,” Hannibal tells her, lost in memory. Little Havana. A Tuesday, scarcely a month from the cliff--that’s the only way Hannibal measures time any more, the eras before and after meeting Will, the years before and since Will threw them into myth. Will looks down from the balcony, face still swollen and healing. My palm tingles, remembering the weight of his injured cheek within it. I touch my fingers to my mouth, to lips that kissed him for the first and last time, and he touches his, too. Then he smiles at me, crooked and beautiful, and goes back inside.“Scarface always did seem a drifter to me. What’d you say his name was?”"Will." It’s the first time Hannibal’s said his name outside of bedroom walls in a decade.***Hannibal has made a place for them in Cuba. After ten years of forced separation, he's returned to take Will home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I started another WIP. No, I'm not sorry.
> 
> This is for [Hannibal Cre-Ate-Ive](http://hannibalcreative.tumblr.com/)'s [HannibaLibre](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/HanniCreative_HannibaLibre) challenge. All I know about Cuba comes from one of my favorite Spanish instructors, whose family escaped Castro. He encouraged my fascination with Cuban culture. I hope I do him proud with my limited knowledge here. <3

The employees of the Kickin’ Back Food Market call him “Scarface”. They aren’t being rude or unkind, Hannibal’s determined; the odd mute man simply hasn’t provided them with an alternative. On the contrary, they all seem innately fond of Scarface, particularly a sweet cashier named Holly.

“One of the kids gave it to him,” she explains to Hannibal. He feels overdressed here in his seersucker suit, confronted on all sides by cutoff shorts and garishly bright polos. Holly, herself, seems to have forgotten her age, wearing a strapless sundress, but it’s at least a reprieve from everyone else’s knees. “Ed that works in the back made the older ones watch the movie with him--he’s simple, you know, poor man. Said he was learnin’ them their roots.”

“Do they all have drug running in their backgrounds?”

Holly snorts and says, “Good God, no, but Ed’s got a load of hate and stereotypes in his, bless his heart. Ed’s daddy was a Grand Cyclops up north, you know, near Jasper. Should’ve seen Ed when Trump ‘came President.” She laughs again. “And you _really_ should’ve seen him when we got Miss Michelle in office right after. Why, I ‘member--”

“I apologize for interrupting,” Hannibal begins, “but I must find my friend as soon as possible. It’s really quite urgent.” Never mind that he’s weary from the long journey, and desperate to make up for the decade lost between them--although, to be honest, Hannibal’s primarily tired of hearing the social history of Summerland Key. He’s mostly been in his head since he walked in.

 _Little Havana. A Tuesday, scarcely a month from the cliff_ \--it’s the only way Hannibal measures time any more, the eras before and after meeting Will, the years before and since Will threw them into myth. _Will looks down from the balcony, face still swollen and healing. My palm tingles, remembering the weight of his injured cheek within it. I touch my fingers to my mouth, to lips that kissed him for the first and last time, and he touches his, too. Then he smiles at me, crooked and beautiful, and goes back inside._

“We parted ways in Miami,” he continues, turning away and walking down their street, away from Will, from love, from life. “I hoped to still find him there, and have been retracing his steps here, instead.”

“Scarface always did seem a drifter to me. What’d you say his name was?”

Hannibal blinks; a drop of sweat runs under his collar, turning a peach stripe orange. He licks his lips before responding, “Will.”

It’s the first time he’s said his name outside of bedroom walls in a decade.

“Yeah,” replies Holly with a nod, “yeah, that’s a good fit for him. He looks like a Will.”

 _What, precisely, does a Will look like?_ Hannibal wants to ask, but he refrains. It will be better to wait and see for himself. Ideally for the next forever.

“Where’d you say y’all met?”

“I hadn’t.”

“Oh.” Holly doesn’t let Hannibal’s curtness dissuade her. “Scarfa--Will, I mean, he always acted like a vet, you know. Got those eyes that see everywhere at once, lookin’ for threats and trouble, that kinda thing.” She puts on her eyeglasses, a pair of purple plastic rims dangling by their legs from a gold chain around her neck. “I told the kids that’s where he got them scars, you know, in battle. He let Paulie poke his bullet wound once--I know that’s what it is, my uncle had one like that.”

Hannibal hasn’t been able to take a full breath since the day he left Florida, but it feels that much harder, listening to Holly tell him all about Will. He apparently comes in with a scraggly old collie, and the employees have mutually agreed to pretend it’s a service animal. Will’s never once said a word to any of them, “And I’ve worked here for the last twenty years, you know,” she says.

“Sometimes the kids,” and in Hannibal’s mind, there aren’t any singular children here, just “the kids”, an evolving, churning mass of short humanity, “follow on along down to the dock and watch him fish. He’s such a nice man,” but Hannibal already knew that, though he’s heartened to know that a cruel life and Hannibal’s own absence haven’t changed him.

“Up here every Saturday morning an hour after we open, like clockwork,” she says, acting as if she knows everything there is to know about anyone and everyone. Then again, she likely does. “Reads the Miami Herald and the Sun Sentinel. Buys his alcohol and his smokes and his gas and his groceries. Two bags of dog food--Rachel up the shelter says he always brings one by and drops it off.”

Hannibal’s heart aches more than usual.

“Now he always been a vegetarian? One of them that eats fish, too, I mean.”

Holly changes topics so fast that it makes Hannibal’s head spin. His mind is still sharp, but not nearly as quick as it once was. “Not always, no.” Hannibal can’t help but wonder if Will’s been making up for lost time murdering tourists, letting alligators take the blame for mysterious disappearances, and the thought makes him smile.

Holly purses her lips as she thinks. “Can I ask you a question?” Hannibal knows it doesn’t matter if he approves or not, that Holly will ask him, anyway; it’s only hospitable Southern propriety that leads her to ask, at all. Sure enough, “How’d he get the big scar? You know, the one across his tummy. Looks like a nasty cut, that one.”

“Unfriendly fire,” Hannibal says carefully. “Covert operations.” He swallows, then adds very quietly, “I mistook him for an enemy combatant.”

“Oh honey.” Holly grabs his hand from where it rests on the counter, squeezing it with her own. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t’ve asked. Should’ve figured out y’all served together. Or…” She clears her throat softly. “More than buddies, at least, somethin’ like that.”

“Something like that,” he echoes, “yes.”

“Y’all get in a fight?”

“No, we--” He pauses, considering how best to put it. “Elements of our old life found us. It became necessary to separate, and then I lost...no,” says Hannibal, sighing, “not lost, but neglected to stay in touch. A misguided effort at keeping him safe, I’m afraid.”

Holly’s eyes are wide and round, magnified behind her glasses. “That must’ve been some covert operation. What--”

“Classified, I’m afraid.” Hannibal’s curious how long it will take Holly to gossip about this with the locals after he leaves. Mere minutes, probably.

She nods. “Yeah, s‘pose it would be. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ kinda stuff.”

Hannibal says nothing to that, only smiles.

“Does explain how he smells, though,” and Hannibal’s smile falters. Before he can ask, Holly answers. “A man walks around smellin’ like the inside of a bottle of Beam, you know he’s seen some shit. Will know you’re comin’?”

“It would hardly surprise me if he did,” says Hannibal, still trying to process what she’s said.

Holly frowns at him. “Hey, what’re you here for, anyway?”

“Directions,” Hannibal tells her simply. “I mean to take him home.”

“Hmm.” She shakes his hand up and down in hers as she thinks before turning to yell over her shoulder, “Hey, Walt?”

A long pause.

“I said, ‘Hey, Walt?’”

“Yeah?” comes a gruff voice from behind a shelf a few aisles over.

“You ‘member where Will’s at?”

“Who?”

“Scarface,” she amends. “You know, fella with the dog? Wrote for a rescue durin’ that big storm? And you drove him out here? He stayed in our guest room while he waited on parts to fix his boat?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Walt, still out of sight. “Yeah, I ‘member. He’s out in lower Sugarloaf.”

Holly turns back to Hannibal. “He’s out in lower Sugarloaf,” she repeats, as if Hannibal hadn’t already heard.

“Take the highway all the way south to Sugarloaf Key,” Walt says, “and then you’ll want to hang a left onto an access road. He’s off in the middle of some thatch palms and buttonwoods. You’re gonna think you’re goin’ the wrong way, ‘cause you’ll run out of pavement and be drivin’ on dirt, but you ain’t. House’s pink as salmon. Up on stilts, looks like it’s gonna fall if you breathe too hard. Can’t miss it.”

Hannibal pictures a mongoose under the house to match the one inside. “You have been very helpful,” he tells them, though not nearly as grateful as he is that Holly has finally released his hand. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“You bring Will ‘round on your way out, alright?”

He tilts his head in deference and says, “Of course,” but they both know that he won’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love you've already shown this fic! I always appreciate hearing from you. <3

Will hasn’t said a word since he found Hannibal’s note ten years ago. If asked why, he’s not sure he would have a concrete answer, or even one that remained consistent. Perhaps grief, at first, an intense and dreadful longing as he sat on the balcony day after day, watching life go on. But Will has yet to cry, and he has cried over everyone and thing else that he’s ever grieved for, so grief feels like entirely the wrong emotion.

“We all go quiet when he leaves us,” Chiyoh told him when she showed up in the apartment a few months later. “But he comes back, in his own time.”

He glared at her from where he laid on the couch. Will hadn’t slept in the bed since he pieced together that Hannibal hadn’t been captured, but certainly wasn’t returning.

“Hannibal will return,” she reiterated, “whether you deserve it or not. Whether you want him to or not. He’s a sun that sets in the wrong direction; you know it will rise again, because it must, but you aren’t sure from where. Still, your sky won’t be dark forever, Will Graham. Enjoy the night while you can.”

And then she had left him, too.

 _I saw Uncle Jack yesterday on Calle Ocho,_ Hannibal’s letter said. Will read it obsessively the night of Chiyoh’s visit, looking for some sign, a clue, a portent, _anything._ But there’s nothing to be divined from the inexplicable copperplate written with a cheap black Bic.

 _When he finds you, tell him I forced you,_ and Hannibal never said to do what or how. He left it open-ended, up to interpretation, because of course he had. Hannibal never had answers; he only gave more questions.

 _I’m sorry,_ Hannibal said, as if it mattered.

 _I won’t let them take you,_ he said, as if Will would care about anything once he left.

 _Forgive me,_ he said, as if Will couldn’t.

But he didn’t say, “I love you,” and for that particular offense, Will never would.

Not grief, then. Perhaps anger kept him silent, and Will had anger in spades. Once he finally burned the letter--no need for the world to ever know he’d been a jilted bride, after all--Will felt nothing but rage, a misplaced loathing for anything that moved, breathed, and was made of meat. He’d left an entire life behind for this anger, so he kindled it, reveled in it. Anger was all he had left of Hannibal now--anger, and the composition he had written into his skin.

He lived in the apartment for the entirety of the first year. Although, to be more accurate, Will came back to the apartment to eat and sleep, and spent the rest of his time channeling his love through the tip of a knife. It was easy to find and watch other lovers, easy to watch them love and leave and be left. Each time, Will wondered which of the two he would ultimately kill; every time, he chose the lover abandoned. He couldn’t forgive Hannibal with a blade, but maybe he could forgive himself with one.

Home invasions were remarkably easy to stage, though Will never kept the fruits of his theft. There were plenty of beggars in Miami, an endless supply of cups to drop jewelry in. If they successfully pawned the pieces, so be it; if they were caught and accused and put in prison, so be that, as well. Either way, they’d be taken care of for a little while.

It was easy to give up morality once Will decided to do so. Hannibal’s final gift to him.

The rage dissipated, too, eventually, but Will still had no inclination to speak. That may have been because he spent his break from fledgling serial killing in front of a laptop, putting on thirty pounds and gaining a both intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of 1960s television, particularly _Star Trek,_ which he couldn’t believe had been cancelled after a mere three seasons. When Will had begun planning elaborate ways to kill every executive member of the three major networks in retribution, he decided that he simply wasn’t capable of watching television and maintaining a clear head.

Will looked for new hobbies that kept him from having to deal with people, and thus, not having to talk. At that point, Will thinks that he’d simply decided to stay silent out of sheer petulance. Hannibal had always wanted him to talk, hadn’t he? To have conversations?

He took up jogging for a while, not to work off the weight gained from his relatively brief couch potato phase, but just to experience what it was like to run for no particular reason. It was unenjoyable, and he had to tie his hair back. Combined with his beard, Will felt he looked too conspicuous, too memorable; worse still, people kept trying to _talk_ to him. Even after shaving his head and his beard, Will was still being approached more than he was comfortable with, so he just gave it up.

The shorts, however, he kept, because Will was certain Hannibal would hate them.

Will tried a number of activities after that, occasionally ones he was interested in, mostly ones the imaginary Hannibal in his head scoffed at. Again, it was childish, or maybe angry, or grief-driven, somehow.

In the end, Will realized that he had no good reason for being silent that wasn’t somehow related to Hannibal, just as Chiyoh had said. It was irritating, the way all of the people in Will’s life managed to be correct about him without actually being _right._ Then again, Will had lived a lie every day he’d drawn breath, until he walked into the cliffside house with Hannibal.

(He tries not to think about that day anymore. Whenever Will wanders into that particular room of his mind palace, he ends up spending several days in more of a whisky-filled haze than usual.)

So Will had packed up his few belongings, hot-wired the first beater he’d found, and driven as far south as the gas in the car took him, ending up somewhere in Islamorada. He’d thumbed a lift, then realized he was going to have to speak to the driver, and thus killed him, instead. Will lugged the man from the front seat of one car and into the trunk of the other, then started driving again.

An hour later, after an unadvised amount of mindless driving, Will had found himself standing in front of his house, like he is now, admiring the peeling siding and the crooked windows and the half-broken stairs up to the equally-inadvisable porch. But it was quiet, peaceful the way Wolf Trap had been, a place that made him feel disconnected from the rest of the world, a private oasis situated between a poisonwood forest and turquoise water as far as he could see.

Will has been squatting here ever since. His only real possession is the boat, and, besides food and sundries, it’s all he’s spent his money from Hannibal’s offshore bank account on. He sits on the beach in ridiculous shorts, using too little sunscreen and drinking too much, but smoking only as much as he can excuse. Hannibal would complain about Will’s smoking because it kills his taste buds, but food doesn’t have as much appeal as it used to. Besides, what good is a pessimistic misanthrope without a few dozen unhealthy habits?

He doesn’t even masturbate anymore. It seems pointless, to mouth a name with lips used once, then cast aside. Living, itself, was pointless, really, but Will just couldn’t seem to die. What an utter waste of immortality.

And then, last week, while Holly jabbered away and the kids played with Dog outside, Will had seen the obituary, and life had become mildly interesting again. Jack Crawford, late of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, notorious for the capture of Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, had died, the Herald told him. A heart attack, of all things. No family to mourn him.

_Good._

Will had come home and gone through Saturday’s evening motions--docking the boat; eating SpaghettiOs straight from the can; playing fetch with Dog; pretending he was Hemingway with an eternal case of writer’s block. The only difference was that, instead of getting wasted and burning through a pack of cigarettes, Will packed a bag. Three pairs of shorts. Every t-shirt he owned, also numbering three. His scrapbook.

There was still room in the backpack, so Will tossed in an unwrapped toothbrush and a new tube of toothpaste and an unused bar of Irish Spring. Still room, so he crumpled down the top of a half-used bag of dog food, and packed that in, as well, then put it next to the front door and gone to bed.

Four days later, Will hears the purr of an engine approaching the house. He has enough time to brush his teeth and put on a shirt. Will looks at himself in the vanity mirror and shrugs. He’ll just have to do. It’s not like he’s had plumbing or electricity or a compulsion to look like a rational human being.

Honestly, Will isn’t sure he’ll be able to reintegrate into society after eight years completely off the grid. He doesn’t even remember what it’s like to poop sitting down and not treading water in the ocean, offending the fish.

The car outside stops. Its door opens, then shuts. Will’s heart flutters in his chest, and he worries that perhaps it’s now _his_ turn to have a heart attack, which would be terribly inconvenient, given that the stairs are creaking, and now Will’s hands are trembling, and he wants to run over and open the door but he can’t make his legs work a n d

 _Oh,_ Will thinks. _This is what hope feels like._

Steps on the porch, stopping right in front of his door.

_I’ve been waiting for you. I didn’t know I was still waiting._

A knock. It’s more hesitant than Will would have expected.

_I’m not going to cry. I refuse to cry. I haven’t cried yet. I won’t now._

Will forces himself to walk forward and open the door.

They stand and look at each other for a long, long time.

It’s strangely anticlimactic.

Dog barks.

 _Jesus, just_ say _something!_ though Will isn’t sure which of them he wants to speak.

“Hello, Will.”

And Will hauls off and slaps Hannibal as hard as he can, relishes the way Hannibal’s head snaps to the left, how it makes his silver hair fan across his forehead. There are wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, though; Will knows it didn’t hurt him. He didn’t expect it to.

“Asshole,” says Will, voice rough with disuse, and he immediately claps a hand to his throat, like it will ease the pain of making his vocal cords work.

Hannibal’s smiling at him, but his shoulders are shaking, and Will’s never seen him cry--almost, but not quite, and not like this. “I have missed you,” he whispers, and his voice cracks, too. “You are safe, and I have missed you. You are alive, and you are safe, and _I have missed you.”_

Will collapses into Hannibal’s arms, holds him tight enough to bruise, and sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two are gonna be the death of me, but what a way to go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So happy to hear that you're enjoying this! Thanks for all the kind words thus far. :D

Hannibal would feel guilty about living in innumerable clean, comfortable spaces while Will lived in a ramshackle hovel, except Will seems to have adapted thoroughly to the life of a beach satyr. He has a very nihilistic air about him, though Hannibal can’t confirm that Will subscribes to that particular philosophy. Hannibal would have more luck getting Nietzsche, himself, to talk.

He will speak when he chooses, and Hannibal must learn to accept this.

If he eventually has to present his face for slapping in order to coax Will’s voice, Hannibal is willing to do so. Then again, Hannibal isn’t sure he deserves Will’s touch, let alone his words. Will seems to agree with that assessment; he hasn’t let Hannibal hold him beyond their embrace upon reuniting.

It was like the cliff side all over again, a stark reminder of how touch-starved he remains. Hannibal’s skin crawls with want, with yearning, for any caress, at all. But Hannibal can wait. He can be patient. Hannibal has waited for a decade--a little longer won’t kill him, he thinks.

As for Will...well, Will might.

Currently, however, Will seems content to look out the window and down into the sea. He absentmindedly pets a healthy but obviously ancient one-eyed, three-legged dog with a torn ear. It had followed Will into the car, and Hannibal had known better than to say anything.

Over the years, Hannibal has ventured into his mind palace to admire Will at various points over their relationship--never to interact, only to see, to remind himself of what he had left, to torture himself over what he might never return to. He would stand behind the glass and watch Will living his life, small snippets saved from the many times he’d watched Will unawares. Tackled by a pack of dogs, smiling; fishing in the ice, huddled over and shivering, but happy; spending hours tying flies until they were perfect, content.

Will always seemed better off without Hannibal. It had made him angry, at first, and led to much heartbreak until Hannibal realized that punishing Will only punished them both, and Hannibal had done nothing to be punished for. But the evidence was indisputable; Will was happy without him. Safe without him. Will’s marriage to Molly was proof enough.

Hannibal knew he had to leave the moment Will was healed, had already decided to. Will could make a life for himself as a new man, and he certainly didn’t need directions on how to hunt, should he choose to continue Hannibal’s work. Then Jack had shown up in Little Havana, and forced Hannibal’s hand.

If he loved Will--and Hannibal did, oh,  _ how he did-- _ then he must set him free again. Should fate see fit, their paths would cross as they had before. Will would be fine, Hannibal told himself.

Now, he looks at the man in the seat beside him, and Hannibal is no longer so certain, though the years have been kind to him. Will grows impossibly more beautiful with age, Hannibal has decided, though that same strange and lost look has returned to his eyes. His hair is wild, long brown curls dappled through with gray, and Hannibal is loathe to see it cut. He wants to run his fingers through it, to wash it, to comb it. Will’s skin is a deep golden brown, worshiped by the sun in ways Hannibal has only dreamed of doing.

It’s good that Hannibal has also dreamed of feeding and clothing Will properly, because Hannibal saw what passed for food in what passed for Will’s kitchen--and Hannibal uses that term very,  _ very _ loosely--and Will’s wardrobe is, at best, passing for interesting. He undoubtedly appreciates the extremely high cut of Will’s shorts; the odd shade of lilac, however, not so much.

Hannibal’s struck by how oddly anticlimactic the whole affair has been. They’ve spent far more time apart than together, have pined more than they have touched. Now, at long last, they sit breathing the same air, one of them unwilling to speak, the other surprised to be speechless.

“What is your dog’s name?” Hannibal asks, as if he’s acquainting himself with a stranger across the aisle. He feels awkward in a way he never has.

Will doesn’t turn away from the window, or stop petting the bedraggled, drooling beast. Eventually, though, he does offer, “Dog.”

“You...named your dog...Dog.”

“Yeah.” Hannibal honestly doesn’t know what to say to that, but Will saves him from needing to reply, at all. “Cuba?” he asks.

Hannibal looks at him sideways. “Am I so open a book for you, even now?”  _ After all these years, _ hangs unsaid between them like smoke.

“No extradition,” says Will, shrugging. “Now?”

“And not before?”

“Mhm.”

“It is…” Hannibal’s hands distract him momentarily, the veins more prominent at sixty than at fifty. Ten years seems even longer than it had before, looking at his hands. “It is complicated,” he says.

“Try.”

“You were ill. I had no place prepared for us. Jack had caught our trail, and I--”  _ Love you more, somehow, than I do myself. _ “I left a letter for you,” and Hannibal is no longer in his element here, not after so many years of disuse, like a language he once had mastered but now struggles for a simple foothold in.

“Hmm,” but Will remains a fluent tongue. Hannibal knows Will as well as he knows himself, if not better. If he keeps repeating that, Hannibal thinks he will begin to believe it once more.

“I thought it best to keep moving, to wait Jack out, but Jack was persistent. I have been transient all these years, Will, and it is not a life I would wish for you.” He hesitates, and that’s not something he’s used to doing, either. “And he knew where you were.”

That gets Will’s attention. He whips his head around, eyes full of storm, and all Hannibal would need to do to put that same scarred cheek in his hand once more is reach out a few inches. It might as well be miles.

“We clashed in Barcelona, five, perhaps six years ago. Time holds no allure for me anymore; I try not to measure it.”

Will smiles, lovely and small. “Same.”

“He told me,” Hannibal says, “as we fought, that you had never left Florida. That if he caught me, he would go after you; the same, should I disappear for too long. His crew tracked our location before I could do more than maim him. After that, it became more important to keep running than to kill him.”

He watches Will swallow. “Oh,” and it’s more a breath than a word.

Hannibal wants to hold Will’s hand. Instead, he asks, “May I pet Dog?” Will nods, so Hannibal steels himself, then plunges his hand into Dog’s fur. Dog drools on his shoe appreciatively.

“Still mad,” Will tells him.

“Why?” but Will doesn’t explain, only looks at Hannibal like he’s disappointed. Hannibal dislikes his innate need to steer the conversation in a more comfortable direction, and he was unfortunately correct in his earlier assessment--Hannibal truly no longer has any idea how to verbally spar with someone of the same intellectual caliber. “Did you know I would come for you?”

Will moves his hand to scritch Dog’s other ear, and suddenly Dog is the happiest of his name. “Seemed likely.” A pause, and he adds, “If.”

Hannibal’s heart lurches, because it was never a possibility he’d entertained. “If I was still alive.”

“Yeah,” says Will, and he sounds defeated. “Yeah.”

“I feared the worst,” Hannibal says, “when you weren’t in Miami.”

Will moves his hand incrementally closer to Hannibal’s. “Bored.”

“Did you hunt?”

“Not food.”

“Pleasure, then?” Hannibal shifts his hand toward Will’s.

“What else?”

Hannibal lets the subject drop, content knowing that Will, when left to his own devices, is still a formidable predator. “I have secured rooms for us,” he says, waiting for Will to take his hand, should he so choose. “They are ours for as long as we please, purchased outright. They will need some renovation, I’m afraid, as well as furnishing.”

“Kitchen?” Hannibal tries not to act too excited, but the corners of his mouth are uncomfortably high, and Will’s soft smile is back. “Good. Cook for me?”

“Tonight?”

“When else?”

Were it not biologically impossible, Hannibal would be afraid that his mouth might get stuck this way. “Whenever you like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may be a wait between chapters, but I promise not to abandon you in Miami for a decade. <3

**Author's Note:**

> By my outline estimate, this should run about six chapters. I have three written thus far--like all of my other projects, I didn't think this would be very long. Should've known better. Anyway, this will update sporadically, so keep your eyes open.
> 
> I have a [pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/shiphitsthefan/ficgrumpy-old-cannibals/) for this fic, in case that sort of thing interests you.
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/). I also chirp occasionally witty things on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan).
> 
> Kudos and comments validate my existence. <3


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